ABSTRACT
The practice of dividing history into more or less conventional “periods" is always somewhat arbitrary and unsatisfactory, and at first sight there hardly seems much justification for treating the year 1715 as an important turning-point in the history of Germany. Germany from 1648 to 1815 was little more than a geographical expression, its history, such as it is, is a history of disunion and disintegration. When Germany was being divided into two antagonistic camps, the Catholic and the Protestant, it was impossible from the nature of the quarrel that the Emperor should be neutral. Loyalty to the Empire seemed to the majority of German Protestants incompatible with the safety of their religion. The judicial institutions of the Empire retained rather more vitality; but even they were in a moribund condition and had been hard hit by the anarchy and disorganisation produced by the Thirty Years' War.
